


Dog Days

by tatooinesun



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6264979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooinesun/pseuds/tatooinesun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soul, Maka and a broken AC leads to more than either of them expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dog Days

She's been on Soul all day long to fix their apartment's fritzed air conditioner. Death City's summers are blistering at best but with the lack of an AC unit, the humid air is positively unbearable. She's spent her afternoon in shorts and a tank top in a meager attempt to alleviate some of the heat to no avail. It's hot as hell, the kind that pierces your skin and settles uneasily in your bones and no lack of fabric is going to change that.

Soul however is seemingly unfazed. Every time she asks his excuses are the same; he'll fix it later, the heat spell won't last, it's not _that_ hot. He lounges across their sofa in nothing but a pair of shorts and she pretends not to notice the trail of sweat that drips enticingly down the curve of his throat. No _not_ enticingly, she reminds herself. Sweat is disgusting and it's so wrong to think of Soul that way. Honestly this heat is going to her head.

But they're not kids anymore, or the awkward gangling pre-teens of their youth. Young adulthood has spurred them both into a different state of being entirely. There are times where she finds herself smiling at the sound of his husky laugh or haphazard sheets of pencil scrawled music notes. Maybe her gaze lingers just a little too long on the expanse of his waist or the lean length of his arm and why can't he just fix the damn air conditioner so she can move on with her life already?

To maintain some small amount of relief (and sanity), they sit together cross-legged on the living room floor in front of a noisy rusting fan they've dug out of a closet, she with a book in her lap and he with a pair of headphones in his ears she'd given him for his birthday. It's nice to see him use them. She likes to listen to him hum along to the music even if it's distorted by the racket of the fan as it oscillates and she thinks for a split second that alright maybe this isn't so bad after all. She smiles as his foot taps along to the rhythm and her book has been open to the same page for a good few minutes now. But then the fan sputters to a screeching halt. Soul kicks it with a growl of protest which only proves to further damage what might have been salvageable as the ancient fan crumbles into a heap of wayward fan blades and wires. She has to restrain the urge to chop him.

In the evening she eats sticky half melted popsicles atop their counter which is marginally cooler than any other surface in the apartment. Blair slinks beneath her dangling feet, forked feline tongue catching whatever drips from her syrupy treat. Soul drifts into the kitchen some time later, takes one look at the popsicle in her mouth and reaches for the freezer. Years of honing her reflexes has her arm pinning the door before he has a chance to act.

"Not until you fix the AC."

He glares at her ultimatum but surrenders otherwise peacefully and she gives her popsicle a triumphant lick when he makes his exit, confident he's finally decided to relent and restore their unit to it's former functional state.

She whacks a book at his head when she finds him snoring on the couch a few minutes later and then stomps off to bed, which she quickly discovers is a terrible idea. Staring up at the paint peeled ceiling, she has nothing to distract herself from the lingering heat and she tosses and turns, envious of Soul's vibrating snores coming from where she's left him on the sofa. She kicks off the sheets in a feeble attempt to ward away the muggy humidity that clings to her skin but then decides the fabric is cooler than the stiff air around her and pulls them back on - and then promptly kicks them off again. This goes on for roughly ten minutes before she groans loudly and clambers out of bed.

The cool tile lined bathroom is her respite and she sits on the edge of the tub, letting her bare feet soak in the icy water spewing from the faucet. She dips a wash cloth in the run of water and drags it along her arms and legs, sighing at the relief it offers.

"Can't sleep?" Soul's voice sounds behind her without prelude and she nearly jumps into the tub. He's propped against the door frame with a lazy amused smirk, arms crossed and demeanor relaxed as though he's been there for hours. He's still shirtless and she stubbornly pushes down the heat that forms in her belly.

"No. I can't," she replies coolly. She's still mad about the fan.

"Because of the heat?"

Not dignifying him with an answer she turns back around but finds it exceedingly hard to ignore him when he joins her on the rim of the tub, rolling up his pants to dip his feet beside her. He wiggles his toes in the frigid water before letting out a sigh and she tries not to feel the weight of his bare arm pressed against her side. She goes rigid when he gives her purple sleep shirt a slight tug on the sleeve.

"You're wearing too many layers. Dummy."

"Any less and I'll have nothing on, Soul." The words leave her mouth before she can even begin to regret them and her cheeks blaze crimson when she feels him stiffen next to her. "Besides, I always wear this to bed."

He proceeds nonchalantly as if she hasn't just alluded to being naked. "Yeah and you're going to die of a heat stroke."

"I wouldn't if you'd just fix the air conditioner," she grumbles.

He acts like he doesn't hear her and reaches over, taking the washcloth from her hand -which is a bit of a struggle as her grip has tightened immensely from the off handed comment that's going to be haunting her years from now. "Here. At least let me help you cool off."

There's no time to protest because suddenly he's running the cloth across her neck and it feels so refreshing and intimate and why on earth would she ever protest to this? She can't even remember the words that have her cheeks so red. All she can focus on is the cool feel of the cloth against her spine and the ever so often sensation of Soul's thumb trailing across her skin.

"Thanks," is all she manages.

"No problem."

They sit in humid silence, broken only by the occasional splash of water. It isn't awkward by any means, nothing can be awkward between two people who share an apartment and a bond and a soul. In an essence, she always know what he's thinking and how he's feeling but in such close quarters it's hard for her to distinguish between his emotions and her own. They might as well be one and the same.

"Your turn?" she offers after a few prolonged minutes, holding out her hand for the cloth expectantly. He passes it to her and she dips it in the water once more before biting her lip and slowly trailing it up the expanse of his back. She watches as his muscles tense and shiver beneath her touch. "Don't be such a baby."

"It's cold," he protests. 

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No."

When she looks up again what feels like hours later, she finds Soul's vermilion eyes staring at her, glowing vibrantly under the fluorescent lighting. She swallows but finds herself unable to turn away. Her mouth is dry, from the heat and the tension and she's positive he can hear the thudding of her heart within her chest, as steady and rhythmic as any song he blasts from his headphones.

She's never noticed how dark his eyelashes are, inky and black - a stark contrast to the pale of his hair. She can count them now, each individual lash that outlines his eyes which are far closer than they'd been a split second ago. And then the washcloth falls from her hand into the water with a dull splash but she barely has time to register this because his lips are on her own and they're cracked and they're dry and positively scalding but for once she doesn't mind. She wants to feel every ounce of heat stemming from his lips, every space of breath and pulsing touch. She hums approvingly against his mouth and she feels him smile wryly beneath her because it feels like their entire lives together have been building up to this one fleeting moment.

They finally, reluctantly, pull away and she expects him to say something deep and profound because that's how all of her flashy romance novels have portrayed the course of this scenario, but instead what comes out is - "It's uncool for a guy to not know how to fix stuff."

She blinks twice.

"What?"

He clears his throat, running a hand through his already disheveled hair. "The AC. I don't know how to fix it."

"You're ridiculous." She bursts out laughing because it's absurd and trivial at this point and so very Soul that her heart swells even more at the confession. "Why didn't you just tell me?"

He grins sheepishly. "I kind of liked seeing you in a tank top." They're both laughing now, at the sheer insanity and inevitability of it all. 

" _Ridiculous_ ," she repeats. And then she kisses him again.

She'll never guess as to why it took a broken air conditioner to bring them to this moment but she sure was glad it did. Half an hour later, when their lips are swollen and they're dozing off, half drenched in a freezing bath tub Soul speaks again.

"Hey Maka?" His fingers are stroking her hair methodically and she's half asleep already. 

"Hmmm."

"Next time just hire a repair guy."

Her slap to his shoulder is fondly half-hearted. 


End file.
